One dog’s search for courage and another dog’s search for fun.

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Tarheel Weimaraner Club AKC trial Sanford, NC 8/16/09

A quick trial run-down from the weekend. We got drawn for one run on Sunday only, but it happened to be what we needed most…Exc. A Standard so I was very excited that I got in for that! I convinced my husband to go with me since it was only one run and I thought it wouldn’t take forever…ha! We were there for almost 2.5hrs before I ran and we got there as they were building the course, gah. What’s worse is Doug somehow missed our run completely because he was confused and didn’t realize that I was taking Miles into the ring a different way after warming him up and he was waiting for us to come back through the other way 😦

Enough about that anyway. The course was really tough…the most difficult course that I’ve ever seen in a trial. I kept watching the small dogs trying to figure out how to handle the opening as it was going to be really tough without a leadout. Miles will stay, but it’s very stressful for him so 99.9% of the time I start with him. I obsessed about the opening all the way up to the big dog walkthrough and then through the walkthrough and through the 20″ dogs. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do for sure until I stepped to the line. Honestly I have to say that my mental game has greatly improved in that respect. I knew that I needed to do what was best for my dog and not what was going to be the flashiest or the fastest, so we started together 🙂 That unfortunately made me have to do 2 rears in the opening including a rear at the teeter. I was definitely a bit concerned about that, but we’ve done it in practice 100s of times and he’s comfortable at this facility so we went for it and he was totally fine with it! The rest went by perfectly despite my inattention to it in the walk through and we came in 1st for our first leg towards our AX!

Gosh I really wish there was video of this run because it really was a great one! Not only was the opening brilliant, but he layed down immediately on the table and allowed me to lead out a bit from there, he had an awesome weave entry that I rear crossed and he continued to weave into the corner (something that would have been very demotivating for him in the past), had great contacts, and read my pushes very well twice 🙂 I’ll try to scan the course map later today….

Up next: USDAA on our home turf over Labor Day, another local USDAA trial the following weekend then one day of AKC locally at the end of September (also should be Rue’s debut if things are going well). Following that, back-to-back AKC for all of October….YAHOO!!